UCPEL Inverno 2009

[1]THE FUTURE OF TWITTER

[2] Microblogging platform Twitter has 32 million users, an increase
[3] from about 2 million a year ago, according to research mentioned
[4] in the Wall Street Journal. Some Internet measurement services
[5] show that figure increasing 50% to 100% month over month.
[6] While it is not clear that Twitter will become as large as social
[7] networks MySpace and Facebook or video-sharing site YouTube,
[8] the company could certainly have 50 million visitors by the end of
[9] the year.
[10] Because Twitter can be used with ease on both PCs and mobile
[11] devices, and because it limits users to very short messages of 140
[12] characters or fewer, it has become one of the largest platforms in
[13] the world for sharing real-time data. A number of large businesses and celebrities have hundreds of thousands of
[14] followers on Twitter.
[15] As Twitter grows, it will increasingly become a place where companies build brands, do research, send information to
[16] customers, conduct e-commerce and create communities for their users. Some industries, like local retail, could be
[17] transformed by Twitter - both at one-store operations that cater to customers within a few blocks of their locations and
[18] at the individual stores of giant retail operations like Wal-Mart (WMT). In either case, having the opportunity to tell
[19] customers about attractive sales and new products can be done at remarkably low cost while providing for greater
[20] geographic accuracy.
[21] Twitter users have set up their own rules of conduct when using the service, not unlike those with MySpace and
[22] Facebook. These rules were not put together by Twitter itself, which mandates only rules of use. Like many
[23] social-network sites, Twitter is self-governed by its members, and companies must take that into account as they join
[24] the service.
[25] Twitter is still in the early stages of developing a plan for making money as a company, but plenty of large corporations
[26] like Starbucks are already using it as a marketing tool. Twitter will probably evolve into both a community of individuals
[27] and a community of companies that provide goods and services for those individuals.
[28] Adapted from Time Magazine (Douglas A. McIntyre)
[29] http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1901188_1901207_1901196,00.html